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How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

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121–130 of 134 posts

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel had me do a drug test just for an internship that I was almost going to take in 1996 or 97. I'm not sure if they still do that, I haven't had a drug test since getting my Chinese work visa (which required a drug and Aids test).

AIDS (HIV?) test? Were they going to discriminate against people with HIV? I don't get it. What about other STDs?

Disease control is one of the primary tasks of customs and immigrations agencies around the world. This authority was exercised quite prominently in 2020. But it is also exercised pretty mundanely on daily basis in regards to the transport of agriculture that carries diseases of agricultural concern... much to the frustration of travelers with foreign snacks.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#122

>Evading in-person meetings or requests for drug tests. I am surprised about the request for drug tests. Is this common in the US? Except for high-security jobs, which are never possible remotely anyway, I have never heard of a client or employer asking for a drug test. If I got a request for a drug test, I would quit immediately. Even if I am sure it is negative, my private life is my business. Any attempt to contro…

> I am surprised about the request for drug tests. Is this common in the US? For software jobs? No, they aren't very common. But they are not unheard of.

[deleted]

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#123

>Evading in-person meetings or requests for drug tests. I am surprised about the request for drug tests. Is this common in the US? Except for high-security jobs, which are never possible remotely anyway, I have never heard of a client or employer asking for a drug test. If I got a request for a drug test, I would quit immediately. Even if I am sure it is negative, my private life is my business. Any attempt to contro…

>I would quit immediately

Not everyone has that privilege.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#124

This reads like blatant fear mongering > infiltrate organizations they work for to steal secrets Do you worry about this as a random company? You are gonna steal source code for 4 out of 12 micro services required to run some random online shopping website, or a video game? what is North Korean gov. Going to do with it? And if you give random people access to customer data, then it’s already being sold on the dark we…

Fyi we don't live in a utopian all for one and one for all world, as unfortunate as that is.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#125

A lot of the advice seems to boil down to "don't hire remote freelancers."

The NK workers tend to be locked up in dorms in different countries. They can't go to drug tests because their handlers won't let them. Likewise, they're not actually in the country they say they are in.

Additionally, drug testing locations examine government IDs all the time, so the NK workers are not likely to actually have one that matches the name they are working under. Otherwise, people who use illegal drugs could hire "clean" family or friends to give the hair/urine/blood required for the tests.

People who have escaped from Scientology report being treated similarly - guarded at all times when they leave their compounds, ID documents seized.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#126

>Evading in-person meetings or requests for drug tests. I am surprised about the request for drug tests. Is this common in the US? Except for high-security jobs, which are never possible remotely anyway, I have never heard of a client or employer asking for a drug test. If I got a request for a drug test, I would quit immediately. Even if I am sure it is negative, my private life is my business. Any attempt to contro…

As part of the vetting procedure, my government job (not dealing with highly classified material) asked my former employers if they knew any of my sexual fetishes.

Unless your former employer was Cloudflare or Mindgeek, I'm not sure how would they know lol

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIDS (HIV?) test? Were they going to discriminate against people with HIV? I don't get it. What about other STDs?

Many countries do this for immigration. In New Zealand they say your test result doesn't affect your application. Whether that's true I don't know.

you want to know of any potential carriers and be able to trace potential vectors. plus if you offer socialized medicine you want to know that in order to adjust things like supplies of drugs and coverage for foreign travelers.

Canadian immigration wanted my full medical history for Permanent Resident status, and there was a medical check, blood work, and a chest xray for TB. I was in the US military with injuries from that, and they asked for all of the paperwork.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As part of the vetting procedure, my government job (not dealing with highly classified material) asked my former employers if they knew any of my sexual fetishes.

Unless your former employer was Cloudflare or Mindgeek, I'm not sure how would they know lol

People often talk. Jim used to date Jenny in Accounting, and he said she's really, like REALLY, into S/M, etc.

Plus you'd be surprised (or maybe not) as to the number of DNS queries we get from employee workstations that are to questionable websites. I couldn't tell you all of my coworkers that are gay, but I can tell you a few that are hitting gay porn websites from their work laptop.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except for high-security jobs, which are never possible remotely anyway, I have never heard of a client or employer asking for a drug test. Some companies have contracts with the Federal Government and even if you won't be working on those projects or won't have to get the security clearance, there are certain clauses in the contracts which requires the company to not have employees drink at work, to drug test empl…

I heard a (likely apocryphal) story that selling govcloud service would require drug testing for employees that had any access at all to those systems. The story goes that the engineering leader laughed their sales counterpart making the proposal out of the room because they expected to lose approximately a third of their employee base to such nonsense. This was before marijuana legalization became so widespread, I a…

weed is still illegal under federal law, so its a no-no if you're doing federal work. state-level is a different story.

in most cases no one cares if you did it last year, but you gotta be clean while on the gub'mnt / contractor payroll.

unofficially after the drug test i don't think anyone asks too many questions. just make sure you don't have to lie on the background check cuz I've seen people upgrade from a Secret to higher, and the higher clearance investigations went deeper and found stuff. RIP job in that case.

but seriously tho, knew a dude who did GIS work for the DIA and he was ripping a bong the second he got home. he eventually got really into the cult-y motivational speaker world, not sure where he is now, but was making fat stacks while blazing for a while

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#130

> logging in from multiple IP addresses, [x] Phone, laptop. > working odd hours, [x] Delayed sleep phase insomnia. > Repeated requests for prepayment followed by “anger or aggression when the request is denied”; [x] Previously ripped off by shitty employers. > Evading in-person meetings or requests for drug tests; [x] Social anxiety, medical cannabis user who is aware that even though legal (in AU) it is stigmatised.…

This is why human judgement is significantly more nuanced than a pile of if statements.

the if statements just generate a flag.

if you're flagged, then here is your plane ticket, come to HQ and let's prove your a real human. showing up, looking more or less like your ID and zoom call, and being able to speak generally about what you're working on is enough.

like even if the job is 100% remote, fly em to the office at least once or twice.

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